Single-seater racer Will Bratt produced a sparkling performance on his GP2 test debut at Paul Ricard in southern France, the 20-year-old British star lapping within nine tenths of a second of the outright pace.

Taking his maiden miles in GP2 at the wheel of a David Price Racing-engineered car, and also making his first outing at Paul Ricard, the 20-year-old Banbury driver completed about 100 laps on the day with a best time of 1m 14.047 seconds for the Surrey team.

Placing Bratt an excellent 13th fastest overall, his performance was within just half a second of experienced GP2 driver Diego Nunes, who was fourth quickest, and only nine tenths of a second shy of pace-setter, regular GP2 runner Kamui Kobayashi.

Impressively, the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC) Rising Star was faster than former Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan, fellow Spanish Formula 3 Championship racer Christian Ebbesvik, Formula 3 Euroseries front-runners Koudai Tsukakoshi and James Jakes and regular David Price Racing GP2 competitor Michael Herck, among others.

Bratt said: "It was a very cool experience running in the GP2 car, I really enjoyed it and I think we did a pretty good job. Considering it was my first time on track at Paul Ricard and my debut in a GP2 car, I'm very happy with the times we achieved.

"GP2 is much more physical than F3, there's obviously much more power which means harder braking — you have to dominate the car to get the most out of it. I enjoyed working with the guys at DPR, it's a great team and we certainly made good progress."

Team boss David Price added: "Considering Will has never been in a car like a GP2, he did an excellent job. Diego Nunes, who raced with us at DPR this year in GP2 and was in one of iSport International's cars during the test, was only half a second quicker than Will so that was a very good benchmark."